Contents

Overview

If you are like us, issues about licensing, copyrights and trademarks are boring at best and quickly become frustratingly opaque. At the same time, we recognize that they are important issues, especially when it comes to promoting and protecting data sharing in scientific domains. So, we have done our homework here at WikiPathways and have settled on an approach developed by Science Commons. We are going to do our best to explain the strategy in clear terms. Please feel free to give us feedback on these issues and voice your opinions and questions on the WikiPathways discussion mailing list.

The License - this is the legal code applicable to the content at WikiPathways. We are using the very permissive CC-BY license. More details below...

Terms of Use - these are our own terms for how we expect WikiPathways content to be used. This is not a legally-binding code, but rather an explicit declaration of our expectations. If you find someone violating the terms of use, let us know and we'll let the community know that they are not playing fair. We believe this approach will be less costly than legal action and, at the same time, more effective at discouraging unfair use. More details below...

Trademark - Anyone using or redistributing WikiPathways content under the terms of our license and terms of use can proudly display the WikiPathways trademark as evidence of being a trusted member of the community. More details below...

The License

WikiPathways content is covered by the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, which states that you are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit) and remix (adapt) the work as long as you attribute the work in the manner specified in our terms of use. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of the work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page. Again, this license is fairly permissive, so you shouldn't feel paralyzed by legalese if you are interested in using or redistributing WikiPathways content. Just be sure to read the terms of use and if you have any questions about fair use, don't hesitate to contact us.

Terms of Use

Contributing

When editing an existing pathway or creating a new pathway, your contributions to WikiPathways content should reflect your best understanding of the biology you are representing. Whenever possible, contributions should be referenced by published, peer-reviewed literature. You can transcribe content from the following resources with appropriate attribution:

text books

research articles and reviews

public databases and pathway resources: KEGG and Reactome

trusted online resources, including wikipedia

your own research and hypotheses (reasonably tested)

You should not make contributions based on work presented by other researchers yet to be published or based on proprietary sources (purchased databases, company secrets, etc).

Downloading

You can download WikiPathways content in any of the available data and image formats we provide, including but not limited to: gpml, mapp, text, eu.gene, html, png, svg, jpeg.

Using

You are free to use the pathway images in presentations, documents, websites and publications. You are free to use the pathway data in analyses, qualitative or quantitative. But you must cite or give appropriate attribution. See Attribution below

Redistributing

You are free to redistribute WikiPathways content on your website, as part of your own resource, with your own software application. You are free to charge for services associated with WikiPathways content, but you are not allowed to charge for the content it self. This does not prevent you from redistributing the content on a CD along with software that you are charging for as long as it is made clear that the content is free and freely available from WikiPathways.org. This does not prevent you from charging for services including additional curation, modification or analysis of the content as long as it is made clear that the content is free and freely available from WikiPathways.org. You may even sell modified versions of the images of the pathway content, e.g., as art, on your website as long as it is made clear that the content is free and freely available from WikiPathways.org. We think you get the idea: do not charge for the content as provided by WikiPathways and if you do associate the content with something you are are selling, make it clear that the content is free and freely available from WikiPathways.org. See Attribution below

Adapting, Dissecting, Augmenting

You are free to download, use and redistribute any part of a given pathway at WikiPathways according to the terms of use. You are free to augment, extend and build upon the content outside of WikiPathways and then use or redistribute according to the terms of use. You are free to edit, subtract from and change the content outside of WikiPathways and then use or redistribute according to the terms of use. Of course, it is always better to make edits to the content within WikiPathways to grow the content and share alike, but this is not strictly required. If there is a feature or function you require in order to perform an edit to the content, do not hesitate to contact us and participate in the design and implementation of the new feature yourself. This is an open source project, after all!

When citing the live version of a pathway, attribution to individual contributors is not necessary. WikiPathways will track and display contributions from individual authors and curators to each pathway on each pathway page. So as long as hyperlinks are provided to WikiPathways, the evolving list of contributors will be indirectly referenced.

However, if you are referencing a specific version of a pathway (even including the current version), then it is important to include a URL of the form: http://www.wikipathways.org/index.php?title=Pathway:WP254&oldid=38946 This approach is useful if you want to maintain a link to a snapshot of the pathway and not have future changes obscure your original points. Use the "oldid" argument in the URL to refer to particular revision ID numbers, which you can find in the History section of each pathway page.

Also, when referencing a specific version, it is appropriate to list the individual contributors, since future contributors are not an issue. Thus, the reference might look like this:

Trademark

The WikiPathways trademark (our logo) can be reproduced with any use and redistribution of WikiPathways content. You do not necessarily have to ask permission before using the logo, if you are confident that you satisfy the license and terms of use. However, we always appreciate hearing about related efforts, so please drop us a line. We will have a wiki page dedicated to listing such efforts.

If you do not satisfy the license or terms of use our first measure will be to contact you and request that you change your behavior. Failing that, we will require that you remove the WikiPathways trademark from your site or resource. We will also have a wiki page dedicated to listing these efforts as well :)

Click on images below to view full size versions of our small and large logos with and without text:

References

Freedom to Research - a clear explanation of the motivation behind the Science Commons Protocols for Implementing Open Access Data.